Free Range

Sofia Jensen make considered folk rock under the name Free Range. The Chicago-based artist is releasing their debut album Practice on February 17 via Mick Music, and it’s sure to be one of the early highlights of 2023. Today, they’ve shared the album’s third single “Growing Away” and a music video for it directed by Robert Salazar.

Free Range’s music makes mature confessionals feel as simple as flicking on a light switch when the sun starts to set. Jensen’s delivery is gentle, even when their lyrics are untangling stormy thoughts. It’s a kind of openness and ease heard in Jeff Tweedy’s or Ben Gibbard’s writing, unveiling comfort in dark truths. Here, Jensen discusses memory loss as a consequence of self-destruction rather than lack of attentiveness. “I let you think that it was accidental,” they sing in the first verse. “When I stopped caring about being careful.” Loss of time and events indicate a loss of something much more—a sense of self.

“‘Growing Away’ was written a few months before I ultimately did get sober, and it deals with the realization that I was losing track of who I was,” Jensen says of the new single. “The things I was doing were all controlled by the lack of compassion I had for myself. I felt really disoriented in this haze of memory loss that was becoming a huge part of my life, and I was still at a point where I had no idea how to talk about it with anyone. It was really important for me to write this song I think, because it served as an exercise in acceptance for me for the things I needed to do to finally take care of myself.”